HIV Info

In 2009 the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a study titled Survey of Americans About HIV/AIDS which found that levels of knowledge about HIV/AIDS has not increased in the US since 1987..

HIV+ and Your Child:

*Many of the below questions and answers are from Project Hopeful mostly. Check out their website for more detailed and extensive info. I will add more info for this section as I come across it. The best resource I have found is the link just below this section. It is a PDF from Project Hopeful.

What would I do differently if my child with HIV bleeds?
There should always be a barrier between yourself and anyone's blood, even children without HIV. This is called Universal Precautions in schools and hospitals and workplaces where gloves are used to handle blood. Clean up this child's blood as you would other children's blood...with a barrier. This teaches all of your children to not touch blood. Check out the link below for more detail.

How often do the children take medication?There are many different kinds of antiretroviral medications used to treat HIV and treatment can vary. The most common regimens use 2-3 medications taken together twice a day.

How much do medications cost?This varies based on insurance companies. Avert.org has a helpful table which lists the various drugs used to treat HIV for you to check against your insurance plan. Most states have assistance for remaining amount of cost if you can not afford it.

Saliva, tears, or sweat. There is no documented case of HIV being
transmitted by spitting.

Casual contact like shaking hands or sharing dishes, air or water

Closed-mouth or “social” kissing.

Can I catch HIV from my child? (this also applies to children playing together).... Many people don’t know that HIV is a very fragile virus. As soon as it leaves the body, it begins to die. There are no documented cases of HIV transmission through casual household or school contact. HIV+ children can (and do!) share cups, baths, pools, dishes, bathrooms, etc.! In addition, when children are on treatment for their HIV, the amount of the virus in their bloodstream can be brought so low that it is considered “undetectable” – meaning the amount of the virus in the blood, even through contact with blood, has been brought so low that the possibility of transmission has become even more remote. From www.fromhivtohome.org

"I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation. I look at my parents and ask, where were they during the civil rights movement? I look at my grandparents and ask, what were they doing when the holocaust in Europe was occurring with regard to the Jews, and why didn't they speak up? And when we think of our great, great, great-grandparents, we think how could they have sat by and allowed slavery to exist? And I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 yearsfrom now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?"